President Joe Biden warned of the possibility that former president Donald Trump and his followers will not handle the 2024 presidential election peacefully.
Biden, appearing Friday at the White House press briefing for the first time, expressed concerns about how Trump will respond to the election, given his false claims surrounding the 2020 contest.
“I’m confident [the election] will be free and fair,” Biden said. “I don’t know whether it will be peaceful. The things that Trump has said and the things that he said last time out, when he didn’t like the outcome of the election, were very dangerous.”
Biden went on to criticize Trump’s running mate, Senator J. D. Vance (R., Ohio) for refusing to concede the legitimacy of the 2020 election during the vice-presidential debate. Vance’s opponent, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, pressed Vance on whether the election was legitimate towards the end of the debate after Vance dodged a question from the moderators about whether he would have certified the results, as then-Vice President Mike Pence did.
“Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their minds in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?” Vance responded.
“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz shot back.
A mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 after Trump spoke at a rally in Washington, D.C., held by a group of his supporters who believed his claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen.
Trump’s legal fight to contest the 2020 election did not pass muster with courts, and special counsel Jack Smith is now prosecuting him in D.C. for his apparent role in the Capitol riot.
Smith laid out his evidence against Trump in a bombshell 163 page filing earlier this week with a little over a month to go until election day. The Supreme Court’s decision in July to grant Trump presidential immunity for official acts prompted Smith to revise the January 6 case against Trump and attempt to draw a distinction between his presidential acts and behavior as a political candidate.
Embattled Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis (D) is prosecuting Trump and his allies on racketeering charges for their efforts to dispute Georgia’s 2020 election results, but Willis’s romantic relationship with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade put the case in limbo.